Installing Stradwin

If you only want to visualise prerecorded ultrasound, DICOM or image sequence data, you can run Stradwin
on any Linux or Windows PC with no additional setup required. We recommend you have a minimum of 2048 MBytes
of RAM (memory) in order to be able to load average sized data sets.
We usually install more than this, particularly when loading high resolution CT data. With some additional installation and the appropriate equipment, you can also use Stradwin to acquire 2D ultrasound
data, acquire freehand
3D ultrasound data, or acquire 3D ultrasound data from a mechanical probe.

A Terason T2000 or
T3000 [4] ultrasound laptop, in which case Stradwin can be run on the Terason laptop. You will
need to contact Teratech for the ActiveX controls 'TTAutomate.ocx',
'TTFrameReceiver.ocx' and 'TTRFReceiver.ocx', which are needed for Stradwin to
interface with the Terason. This will allow direct recording of digital B-scan or Doppler images constructed
by the default Terason software, or of radio-frequency (RF) data from the Terason beamformer.

A Sonix RP, MDP or Touch [8] ultrasound machine, in which case Stradwin can either be run on another PC connected to the Sonix via the ethernet, or directly on the Ultrasonix PC. You will need to
contact Ultrasonix for the software development kit (sdk). This contains 'Ulterius', 'Porta', 'Texo' and 'Impero' libraries needed for Stradwin to interface with the Sonix RP, MDP or Touch systems. Stradwin has been built against sdk version 5.7.4. It has been tested with clinical software version 5.7.4 on a Sonix RP, but should also work with the same software on the Sonix OP/GP/MDP and Touch systems.
Having installed the libraries to a specific location, say c:\sdk, you then need to edit
the following resources in the stradwin.ini file (which will by default reside in the user's home folder).
The settings for the Sonix RP are (probably!):

RES_UTX_SDK_PATH=C:\sdk

RES_UTX_SETTINGS_PATH=D:\Ultrasonix Settings\User Settings

RES_UTX_LICENSE_PATH=D:\Ultrasonix Settings

RES_UTX_CMAP_PATH=C:\Program Files\Ultrasonix\Exam\Settings\Maps

RES_UTX_TYPE=0

RES_UTX_USM=2

RES_UTX_PCI=2

RES_UTX_HV=0

RES_UTX_DDR=1

RES_UTX_CHANNELS=32

The settings for a Sonix MDP system are (probably!):

RES_UTX_SDK_PATH=C:\sdk

RES_UTX_SETTINGS_PATH=D:\Ultrasonix Settings\User Settings

RES_UTX_LICENSE_PATH=D:\

RES_UTX_CMAP_PATH=C:\Program Files\Ultrasonix\Exam\Settings\Maps

RES_UTX_TYPE=1

RES_UTX_USM=3

RES_UTX_PCI=3

RES_UTX_HV=0

RES_UTX_DDR=1

RES_UTX_CHANNELS=64

The settings for a Sonix Touch system are (probably!):

RES_UTX_SDK_PATH=C:\sdk

RES_UTX_SETTINGS_PATH=D:\Ultrasonix Settings\User Settings

RES_UTX_LICENSE_PATH=D:\

RES_UTX_CMAP_PATH=C:\Program Files\Ultrasonix\Exam\Settings\Maps

RES_UTX_TYPE=3

RES_UTX_USM=4

RES_UTX_PCI=3

RES_UTX_HV=0

RES_UTX_DDR=1

RES_UTX_CHANNELS=64

You may need to contact Ultrasonix to confirm what parameters you need to use for the 'USM' (ultrasound module) 'PCI' (PCI version) 'HV' (high voltage card) 'DDR' (dual data rate) and 'CHANNELS' (number of receive channels, 32 or 64) options - these are passed directly to the initialisation functions for the porta and texo drivers, and are dependent on the exact versions of hardware on your machine.
The 'ulterius' driver allows remote access from another PC, 'porta' allows running Stradwin on the Ultrasonix PC, 'texo' for recording data with more control over beamforming parameters, and 'Impero' for using the Ultrasonix keyboard to control
Stradwin. With the 'Impero' library, the time gain control sliders, acoustic power, depth, frequency and focus are all enabled.
An overlay which details which of the other Sonix RP buttons are used for various other Stradwin controls is available here.

A ULA-OP [10] system, in which case Stradwin can run on a PC connected to
the ULA-OP via USB. You will need to create a directory on the PC,
e.g. C:\UlaOp, to contain the files that Stradwin needs to run the
ULA-OP. Then edit the stradwin.ini file to refer to this
directory:

RES_ULAOP_SETTINGS_PATH=C:\UlaOp

Place the ULA-OP firmware file ulaopscanner.bin into the
subdirectory C:\UlaOp\fw and any required beamforming setup files
(.ula extension) into C:\UlaOp\UlaFiles. The firmware and
some sample .ula files are provided with the ULA-OP.

A Telemed [11] ultrasound machine (for instance the EchoBlaster or LogiScan), in which case Stradwin
can acquire B-mode images directly from the machine connected to the PC via USB. You just need the driver package and
echo wave software provided on the manufacturer's website.

An ultrasound machine with accessible analogue
RF signals, and a Gage CompuScope [5]
digitizer card. This enables Stradwin to record RF data from the ultrasound machine. We have done this
with the Dynamic Imaging Diasus, and with the VisualSonics platform. Further details are provided on the
RF acquisition page.

The optical sensors are the most accurate but also the most
expensive. Also note that Stradwin requires either the optical or trakSTAR sensor to be able to track an ultrasound probe and a pointer simultaneously.

Many users of the Bird mount the receiver directly on the body of the
ultrasound probe. Users of the Fastrak and Patriot generally use a rigid plastic mount to offset the receiver by about 10 cm from the probe.

In order to record positions with the ultrasound data, connect your position sensor to one of the serial ports of
the PC or, if your computer does not have old-style serial ports, to a
USB port via a USB-serial converter.

Make sure that all users have permission to read and write to the
appropriate serial device (/dev/ttyS0 or /dev/ttyS1 for old-style
Linux serial ports, /dev/usb/ttyUSB0 or /dev/usb/ttyUSB1 for Linux USB-serial
converters, COM1 or COM2 under Windows). Remember which serial port
you have chosen, as you will need this information to configure
Stradwin.

Acquisition from a 3D probe is only available with the Sonix system, using the 'porta' interface.

Installing Stradwin for Windows

Download Stradwin Install.msi and run it on your system. This
will install Stradwin on your computer.

Follow the further instructions above to install drivers for acquiring images or positions if that is required.

Installing Stradwin for Linux

We provide a compressed tar file containing a 64-bit executable and several configuration files.
Stradwin uses wxWidgets for its user interface, OpenGL for graphics and libv4l for video acquisition.
Most of the necessary packages are installed by default on recent Linux distributions, though you might need to add some by hand (e.g.
libwxgtk3.0).

The executable has been tested with Ubuntu 14.04. It might
also work with other Linux distributions. If not, please contact us
and we will do our best to provide you with an executable for your
particular distribution.

Starting Stradwin

Stradwin expects to find various configuration files in the same
directory as the executable. These include the help data, any Polaris
tool definition files, and RF probe configuration files. In Windows,
you need to make sure that, if you are using a shortcut, the 'Start
In' directory contains these configuration files. In Linux, you should
specify the full path of the Stradwin executable when you run Stradwin
(ie. do not rely on symbolic links, or your shell's search
path). Otherwise Stradwin will still run, but will not be able to find
the help data or configuration files.

Stradwin keeps certain information in a file called
stradwin.ini, which is written out when the program
finishes and read in when it starts up. By default, this file
will be put in your home folder (sometimes called home directory).
It will thus save information on a per-user basis. It is possible
for you to specify explicitly the folder in which this file should
be stored by giving the name of another folder on the command line
as Stradwin is started up: stradwin dir=C:\myfolder

It is possible to start up Stradwin to view a particular file, or load a particular template file or script file, by
specifying the name of the file on the command line. Any
command line argument that does not begin with the letters 'dir='
will be interpreted as the name of a file that Stradwin will attempt
to load.

If a group of people specify the same directory in which
the stradwin.ini should be saved, then they will all share
the same global values of attributes like the isocentre and pointer
calibrations.